News writer; Opinion columnist
Winning the lottery is a matter of luck. There's no system or method or special rabbit's foot that can guarantee you a win. In a random drawing game with numbers that can't be predicted, only guessed. That's just common sense, right?
But what if it isn't? What if some people or businesses actually know how to win the lottery? While reporting on the April 23, 2023, Lotto Texas drawing, we learned about a company called Colossus Bets, which allegedly fronted the $25 million needed to buy out every ticket combination for that game.
Colossus Bets was created by Bernard Marantelli and Zeljko Ranogajec, who, according to court records, are members of the biggest gambling syndicates in the world. Additionally, they each have an alleged history of trying to buy out lottery draws.
Is it possible they were the real masterminds behind the Lotto Texas $95 million jackpot buyout?
What is Colossus Bets?
Colossus Bets is a legally authorized book-making operation based in London, England, founded by Marantelli and Ranogajec in 2012. In addition to offering standard sports betting, Colossus introduced many innovative products, including pool betting, cashouts, and syndicates.
Through betting syndicates, Colossus allows multiple gamblers to pool their money on a single bet and increase their chances of winning a larger prize.
While the company initially focused exclusively on soccer, they've expanded their offerings to include the NFL, NHL, NBA, darts, and pool.
Since its inception, Colossus has enjoyed significant growth. However, they faced a setback when it was revealed that Ranogajec, one of the world's most prominent and successful gamblers, apparently financially backed the company under the alias John Wilson.
Ranogajec's involvement in the company allegedly caused several racetracks to back out of previously agreed-upon partnerships with Colossus.
In addition to its normal sports betting operations, multiple sources claim that Colossus Bets served as the front for the anonymous bettors who spent $25 million to buy out every combination of tickets for the $95 million Lotto Texas drawing on April 23, 2023.
Who is Zeljko Ranogajec?
If you ask knowledgeable people who the world's greatest and perhaps most successful gambler is, one name will come up more than any other: Zeljko 'The Joker' Ranogajec.
Ranogajec is an intensely private man who has never spoken with the press or given an interview. However, despite his attempts to remain anonymous and unseen, we know a fair amount about the man from public legal documents, his testimony in court cases, and reports from gambling industry insiders.
Ranogajec is an Australian of Croatian descent who many claim began his gambling career as a Blackjack card counter. He was apparently so successful as a card counter that he was banned from most of the casinos in Australia.
When casino gambling was no longer an option, he allegedly became an advantage gambler focused on sports betting and horse racing. He used advanced mathematical algorithms and other strategies to identify statistical advantages for gamblers in casino games and sports book odds.
He is known for reputedly running one of the world's most successful gambling syndicates. While the exact membership of the syndicate is unknown, it is said to be made up of mathematicians, data scientists, software engineers, and other highly skilled gamblers who scour the world for betting opportunities.
The syndicate is believed to use advanced software to analyze data from sports books and race tracks worldwide to identify small but significant statistical inefficiencies, which they then bet millions of dollars on.
While it's impossible to know how much money he's won, his lifestyle suggests that his net worth may be in the hundreds of millions. For example, he's known to live at One Hyde Park in London, where the Penthouses sell for over $200 million.
He also owns a fleet of luxury cars and two side-by-side mansions in Australia worth $20 million. He is routinely seen in the front row at high-profile events such as the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament.
In addition to his sports betting activities, there have also been allegations that the Joker has attempted to use his strategies on the lottery at least once before.
According to David Walsh, who is a long-time friend and gambling partner of Ranogajec, they were approached in 1991 by another gambling ring that tipped them off to an Australian lottery that could be manipulated by purchasing all of the combinations.
Walsh says of his partner:
It was a huge logistical exercise for Zeljko. Heaps of his mates filled out tickets all week, and he organized a newsagent to stay open 24 hours a day so he could get the tickets on.
Walsh claims that they won $1.2 million from the scheme.
This describes a less sophisticated version of the same technique used to guarantee a win in the infamous April 23, 2023, Lotto Texas drawing, which we have reported on previously here.
Who is Bernard Marantelli?
While Ranogajec has spent nearly his entire life as a gambler, his partner in Colossus Bets, Marantelli, comes from the world of high finance and banking, having worked at firms including Barclays and Goldman Sachs.
He used his experience and knowledge of risk management to design several of the products Colossus offers, including cash outs, which allow players to collect their winnings before an entire sequence of bets they've made is completed.
Just like his partner, Marantelli has been implicated in at least one attempt to purchase a jackpot, similar to the Lotto Texas drawing.
In October 2019, the Connecticut State Lottery's top prize was $25.8 million. The odds of winning the jackpot were just over one in seven million, which means that with tickets costing one dollar each, it was possible to purchase every possible number combination and make a profit of $18 million before taxes.
Marantelli personally approached officials from the Connecticut Lottery Corp (CLC) and requested their help purchasing millions of tickets.
However, unlike the Texas Lottery Commission, which allegedly bent over backward to help gamblers buy a jackpot, the CLC refused to abet the scheme.
In an email to the state's Department of Consumer Protection, Mark Walerysiak, the CLC Security Director, wrote:
Mr. Bernard Marantelli of the United Kingdom is in Connecticut and is planning to spend as much as $1-2 million on tickets…He initially asked if CLC would be able to set up additional terminals at lottery headquarters to accommodate him. But I told him that we could not because we need to treat him just like any other customer. He was told he could use any of our 2,900 retailers to buy his tickets.
Undeterred by the CLC's refusal to help, Marantelli attempted to buy his tickets the old-fashioned way and dispatched his employees to retailers around the state in an attempt to purchase as many tickets as possible.
Sanjay Patel, who owns the Atlantic Market in Danbury, Connecticut, said Marantelli and his team would bring thousands of dollars in cash to his store daily and purchase as many tickets as possible.
While it's not known how many tickets they were able to purchase, all of their efforts and money were wasted when none of them won the jackpot.
However, the lessons learned during this failed experiment could have facilitated the much more sophisticated and successful alleged Lotto Texas scheme that Colossus was a part of just four years later.
Colossus and Lotto Texas
While investigations into the April 23, 2023, Lotto Texas drawing are ongoing, multiple sources have suggested that the $25 million required to purchase the necessary tickets came from Colossus Bets.
It is not yet known who gave Colossus the money or if perhaps Marantelli and Ranogajec were fronting the money themselves.
Philip Gurian is an investor who allegedly loaned $1.3 million to Lottery.com to help finance the operation. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, he recounted a conversation with Ade Repcenko, who has been identified as one of the key players in the Lotto Texas buyout.
Gurian said of Repcenko:
He told me he worked with a syndicate, and they pool money so that when lotteries get big enough, they buy up all the tickets and get a big return. He said, 'We just did it in Texas.'
Repcenko is the CEO of Spinola Games, a company based in Malta. Sources told Lottery USA that he provided the ticket-buying software necessary for the syndicate to purchase twenty-five million tickets in just three days.
While sources have pointed to several different individuals and organizations as the potential source for the $25 million, given their history of buying out lotteries and their sophistication as gamblers, it can't be ruled out that Marantelli and Ranogajec were behind the Lotto Texas drawing.
Future buyouts?
Despite the negative publicity and ensuing investigations following the Lotto Texas Drawing, Texas Lottery Director Ryan Mindell claims that wealthy investors are still trying to manipulate state lotteries.
In testimony he gave to state lawmakers in October 2024, he said that investors approached state lotteries in Indiana, Oklahoma, and Maryland when their jackpots had climbed to levels, making it mathematically attractive for gambling syndicates to score a large return by buying out all possible ticket combinations.
The state lotteries mentioned have refused to comment.
Comments